Who you callin’ a hipster?

I gave up on the notion of defining myself within a subculture when I ultimately realized that punk is in fact, dead. I was 13 in Alabama – nobody gave me the memo. So I spent a year of my life refusing to listen to anything that wasn’t “punk rock.” Subsequently, I’m really into all pop music that came out around that time. It was everything that I suppressed, without any good reason.\nThen in high school, I laughed at the stoner kids in my art classes that considered themselves hippies because they wore tie-dye and liked Phish. I realized I used to be like that – phony and naive.\nWhile I now decline to define myself into any subculture, that doesn’t mean others won’t.\nHere in the good ole U.S. of A., we have to classify everything. Most importantly, our people.\nLoser. Goth. Bro. Slut. Whatever – we are always classifying others.\nNow, I don’t know who strangers think I am. Maybe a nerd, possibly a thug. But there’s always one classification that really gets under my skin.\nA hipster. And for several reasons, I cringe. I cringe like when I hear Ryan Seacrest making heterosexual comments when I know he’s dreaming of dudes.\nHow do I hate to be called a hipster? Let me count the ways.\nA hipster is many things. They tend to have great taste in music, but they are restricted to follow a certain criteria. This criteria is set by Pitchforkmedia.com.\nI’m not saying I don’t read Pitchfork. It’s a great source for news. I’ll glance at the reviews, scoff at some writers’ attempts to either impress or confuse others with their vast and plentiful knowledge. And I’m sure they do know more about music than most of us, but who really cares? We’re all singing to Kelly Clarkson’s “Since U Been Gone” at 2 a.m.\nWhich leads me to my other qualm. It’s apparently okay to like pop music now, as long as you do so in an appropriately ironic manner. Even the notion of a guilty pleasure is just a way to mask what you genuinely like,\nHere’s the conundrum: I know I have hipster tendencies. I like shopping for vintage duds and albums on vinyl. I love indie music – I’m even an intern for an independent music distribution company. And I can’t help but feel a bit discouraged at those who only know the world of the mainstream.\nSo maybe I’m still just as phony as I was in junior high. But this time, I have the audacity to think I wouldn’t belong to a subculture because I could actually be original. That just might be the most pretentious thing above all.\nBut I’m still going to cringe if you call me a hipster.